


A Perfectly Wonderful Mess (Or, The Toddler Intervention)

by Selenay



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Getting Together, Kissing, Romantic Comedy, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 18:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9002092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay
Summary: "You look tired and you're carrying a child. Unless some things have changed a lot since I left, I don't think he's yours."

Serena didn't move fast enough to escape emergency childcare duties, but at least she has help.
An alternative reunion story





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bringyouhometoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringyouhometoo/gifts).



> The prompts in bringyouhometoo's Yuletide letter were too much fun to resist. I'm not sure this contains all the possible tropes of a romcom, but hopefully it's funny and romantic! Much thanks to PA for last-minute beta duties. All remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> I wrote this before I saw The Kill List so it's been completely Joss-ed, but I love to read all the different ways my favourite pairings get together and I hope you do, too. Happy Yuletide!

"Oh, thank god, you're still here."

The air of desperation in Raf's voice might have made Serena pause, if she hadn't been dog-tired and desperately in need of a bath and ten hours of sleep, not necessarily in that order. She turned to him as she slung her bag over her shoulder and gave him a thin smile. "Not any more. In fact, you can pretend you never saw me, because my shift finished twenty minutes ago and I know we're not short-staffed today, for a bloody miracle."

Raf's smile was sickly. He also seemed to be holding a toddler. Serena recognised the child and held up her hands. "Oh, no. I can't. I really can't."

Raf winced. "It's only for a few hours. Fletch has physio, I'm on duty, and he had a fever last night so the crèche won't take him."

"I really can't."

"If you can't, then I'll have to call in sick and then you'll have to cover me." His smile turned pleading. "Please? He's good as gold and that's got to be better than another morning in this place."

Somewhere beyond Serena's office walls, she heard the distinctive clang of a kidney bowl hitting the floor followed by someone shouting. There was a drunken slur to the man's voice.

Serena sighed. "Fine. But he's coming home with me, otherwise you know what will happen if I try to stay here with him."

Raf nodded quickly. "You'll get called away when an emergency comes in, he'll somehow get out of the office and get lost, and we'll spend all day looking for him while Fletch threatens to tear apart the hospital or move out again out of some misguided sense of stupidity."

"I wasn't thinking of anything that dramatic, but you're probably right." Serena held out her arms. "Hand Theo over and I'll take him home. You can pick him up later."

***

Theo stared up at Serena with wide eyes after Raf left her office, and she smiled at him. "Let's get out of here before anyone finds an excuse to keep me."

She carefully didn't look around as she escaped from the ward, in case someone caught her eye and tried to pull her back. In fact, she was concentrating so hard on not being seen that she bumped into someone as soon as she went through the door.

A familiar voice immediately apologised before trailing away into silence. Serena didn't dare to look up, but she felt simultaneously hot and cold and almost dropped Theo in her shock. Only Theo's worried yelp made her tighten her arms in time.

"Serena," Bernie said, her voice so soft it felt like a caress.

Serena took a steadying breath and looked up. She kept her expression as blank and cool as she could while she tried to find an appropriate opener. "Ah."

As great openers went, that one was awful. Damn. She was much too tired for this.

"What are you doing here?" That one wasn't any better. It was probably worse. Wonderful. Serena would have face palmed, but she was holding a two year-old. She tried again. "You're back."

Maybe it would be better if she stopped talking.

Bernie didn't quite smile, but there was definitely a crinkle of amusement around her eyes. "Not quite. I was signing paperwork. I'll be back officially on Monday."

"That's wonderful news." Serena suppressed a wince at the rather excessive level of cheer in her voice. She'd gone from sounding like a stunned rabbit to sounding like an inebriated Barbie. It was progress, but not the kind of progress she needed. "The trauma unit hasn't been the same without you."

Wonderful. Now she sounded desperate. That thought brought back memories of the last time she'd seen Bernie, and Serena felt her face flush. Would she ever manage to talk to Bernie like a sensible, rational adult again? All signs pointed to no.

Bernie didn't look distressed, at least. Not like the last time. "It's still there, isn't it? Nobody turned it into a mindfulness centre while I wasn't there to defend it?"

"Of course not," Serena said. "The board are idiots, but even they're not foolish enough to waste the money they spent on kitting it out."

A smile twitched at the corners of Bernie's mouth. Oh god, Serena had missed those reluctant smiles. They always felt more precious than anyone else's wide grins.

Now she was starting to sound like a love-sick poet in her head. Wonderful. And she really needed to find a new word soon, or she was going to start hating her own internal monologue.

"Has anything changed while I've been gone?" Bernie asked.

Serena blinked. Rather a lot had changed, and nothing at all. "Jason is now a porter."

Bernie's eyebrows rose. "Really?"

"And Henrik took a leave of absence. Don't worry, Ric is holding the fort while he's gone."

"Is Jason happier as a porter?" Bernie asked.

"Ecstatic." Serena frowned. "I think. It's rather hard to tell with him, sometimes. He gets as excited about having fish and chips on the right day as he does about, well, everything else. Although he isn't pestering me every five minutes with efficiencies and none of the patients have complained or attempted to punch him for at least a week, so I think it's working out well for all of us."

Bernie chuckled. It was a delightful sound that Serena felt she really shouldn't find so beautiful. "If the patients haven't tried to punch him, he must be doing well. I think I nearly got punched on my first day in the field."

"Yes, but you were with the Army. Punching seems rather the thing in that environment."

"We try to discourage soldiers from punching people without orders."

"Ah. Yes. That seems sensible."

Bernie tilted her head. "Are you all right?"

"Perfectly fine." Serena tried to smile brightly. She suspected it didn't look quite right, from the way Bernie frowned. She tried again, with a slightly less exaggerated smile. "I'm quite well, thank you. Why?"

"You look tired and you're carrying a child. Unless some things have changed a lot since I left, I don't think he's yours."

"Ah." Serena glanced down at the top of Theo's head. He was trying to pull a button off her coat. "He's Fletch's youngest. There was some form of childcare failure and, as my shift is over, I volunteered to step into the breach."

"Volunteered?"

"Raf handed him to me and looked pathetic before I could escape."

"Oh, that sort of volunteered. I understand." Bernie looked thoughtful for a moment. "If your shift is over, when was the last time you slept?"

Serena frowned, trying to remember. Her brain was moving more sluggishly than she wanted to admit.

"That's what I thought." Bernie's tone turned brisk. "My paperwork is done and I have nowhere I need to be. Why don't I watch the boy while you get some sleep?"

"Bernie..."

"It's the least I can do."

No, the least she could have done was not run off to Ukraine for weeks and never answer her damn phone, but that was all beside the point. Serena couldn't let her do it, she couldn't, because that would involve inviting Bernie into her house after everything that had happened--or not happened, really--and pretending nothing was wrong.

So she had no idea why on earth she said, "All right, but for the love of god, can you please carry him? My arms are about to fall off."

At least her record for making awful decisions while tired or drunk remained unbroken. Serena was very sure that was a record she shouldn't have, but what the hell.

***

Serena woke up when a beam of sunlight stabbed into her eyes with vicious, possibly even malevolent, intent. For a long moment, she lay in bed shielding her eyes, feeling thoroughly disoriented. She was still tired, but now she had the faint headache behind her eyes she always got when she slept during the day and her mouth tasted like a sewer.

And why the hell was there sunlight?

Cautiously, she lifted her hand a little and squinted at the window. The curtain wasn't completely closed and the sun had found the two inch line of uncovered space to perform its sneak attack on her slumber. She must have been too tired to check them before she went to bed.

Or too discombobulated.

A memory returned. An image of Bernie and her shy, perfect smile, sitting on Serena's sofa with a small sticky boy on her lap. Ah.

The image was too vivid to be her imagination, so that had definitely happened. Somehow, Raf's urgent need for childcare had ended in Serena bringing Bernie back to her house. Serena could vaguely remember how that had happened, but as it involved a lot of verbal incompetence on her part, she shut that memory down quickly.

It was much more important to consider the immediate problem. Bernie was here, in her house, and Serena still didn't know what on earth they were doing or what that meant. The woman she was in love with, who had upended her life quite thoroughly before buggering off to Ukraine, was sitting on her sofa out in the living room and Serena was tempted to pull the duvet over her head and hide.

Very mature. Serena scowled up at the ceiling. She'd been spending too much time with the baby doctors. Hiding under her duvet was the kind of thing Morven would do, although now she thought about it, possibly even Morven would find it too immature to do. 

Serena forced herself to sit up and roll out of bed. She looked down. At least her pyjamas were good, solid, sensible ones, not a scrap of silk or lace in sight. Good old flannel, as unromantic and unsexy as possible, even if this pair did have little wine glasses dancing across the jacket. Serena started towards the door, but she stopped after two steps.

No, she couldn't go out there wearing pyjamas. Her eyes were gritty and her hair probably looked like a rat's nest, too. Bernie was here, in her house, which Serena had to take as a hopeful sign. If there was even the smallest chance that Bernie had been as lonely and miserable as Serena had been, she refused to have that discussion while she felt like the business end of a used mop. Best foot forward and all that.

And if Bernie was only here to be kind, and the weeks away had given her time to forget...

Well, Serena would make sure she knew what she'd missed out on. She turned away from the door and yanked her wardrobe door open.

***

Serena felt much more herself after a good tidy-up and some clean clothes. Perhaps she'd chosen a pair of jeans she knew made her look good and a shirt Bernie had once commented on, but that wasn't deliberate. Oh, no. It was simply what came to hand first.

It didn't even sound convincing in her head, but Serena ignored the little voice that was laughing at her for dressing up to impress. At least Jason was at work. He would have made a comment, something embarrassing, and Serena was determined that this time, she would be suave and brilliant instead of a flustered mess.

Suave. Sophisticated. Experienced. Alluring.

Suave.

Sua--Serena stopped in the kitchen door and stared for a moment, before blurting out, "What the hell happened in here?"

Bernie looked up from scrubbing Theo's cheeks, a blush spreading up her throat and across her cheeks. "Ah."

There was jam on the ceiling. On. The. Ceiling.

"I only left you alone for a couple of hours!"

Every plate and spoon Serena owned was on the table, and they all looked sticky. There were chocolate fingerprints on the fridge door. Something was dripping down a cupboard door, and Serena hoped to god it was chocolate too, or she'd need to call in a decontamination team before she could cook in here again.

"Theo was hungry," Bernie said.

Serena raised her eyebrows. "There's jam on the ceiling. Unless Theo grew wings, I have no idea how you expected him to eat anything up there."

Bernie winced. "My children weren't as...active as Theo. I'm a bit out of practice at this."

"So I see." Serena stared at Theo. There was something sticky in his hair. "You missed a spot."

Bernie swiped at Theo's cheek, removing a smear of jam Serena hadn't noticed. Theo made a face and attempted to escape, but Bernie had a firm grip on the back of his sweater. "Is that all of it?"

"It's in his hair," Serena said.

Bernie's attempt to clean the jam out of Theo's hair without letting go of his sweater probably just mashed it in more firmly, but Serena decided not to comment. It would be a nice surprise for Raf or Fletch later.

"I'd forgotten how fast they can move," Bernie said, as she scrubbed at a chocolate spot on Theo's neck. "I was going to make him a jam sandwich, but it all got a bit out of control."

"I can see that."

"I only turned my back for a moment, but somehow he found a jar of Nutella and it snowballed from there. I really didn't mean to wreck your kitchen."

There was such a look of strained worry lining Bernie's face that Serena couldn't maintain her stern frown. It would probably be funny later, she told herself, as she allowed her expression to smooth out into something that felt a little kinder.

It must have been the right look, because Bernie's expression softened and she tapped Theo on the nose before releasing her death grip on his sweater.

Theo stared up her. "Lego?"

"Yes, go and play with the Lego," Bernie said.

Theo crowed happily and raced away, pushing past Serena's legs with surprising strength. She threw Bernie a worried glance and followed, but when she caught up to him in the living room, he had plunked down in front of a half-constructed tower without causing any chaos in his wake. The tower didn't look structurally sound, but he picked up two bricks and added them to a wall without knocking it over, so she shrugged and went back to the kitchen. She would find out where the Lego came from later, there were more important things to think about right now.

Bernie was staring up at the ceiling with an odd look on her face. "It looks like arterial blood spatter."

Serena looked up. "It looks like a long evening and a coat of paint."

"I'll sort it out," Bernie said.

"No need, I've been meaning to redecorate for a while."

"No, I mean it." Bernie's gaze dropped from the ceiling to a space on the wall around three inches to the right of Serena's shoulder. "I was trying to help, and I've only made a mess of things."

"It was kind of you to try," Serena said. "I don't know why you did, though."

"After the way we left things?" Bernie sighed. "I did rather make a mess of everything, didn't I?"

The unflinching assessment forced an unexpected chuckle from Serena, even though she was trying to stay serious. "I can't say I did any better," she said. "I made a complete fool of myself in the middle of the department, and it didn't do a damn bit of good in the end." She hesitated before adding softly, "You still left."

Bernie looked sad and awkward, her brow furrowing and her lips turning down into the unhappy lines Serena always wanted to smooth away. After a long pause she said, "Was it bad...after?"

Serena shrugged. "Well, there was quite a lot of sniggering and most people didn't bother to hide it. That wasn't exactly a picnic. And Jason, of course, found it all dreadfully confusing--"

"I'm so sorry for that."

Serena waved the apology away. "It was all right, eventually. I think he got over the confusion before I did." She grimaced. "Explaining the vagaries of the human heart to someone like Jason is surprisingly good for resolving your own issues, I've discovered."

"Really?"

"Everything is black and white for him. You love someone or you don't. You want to be with someone or you don't. As soon as you try to explain the complexity of a situation, he cuts straight through all the walls you've tried to put up and makes everything seem quite obvious."

"He does have a knack for simplifying everything," Bernie said, the corner of her mouth twitching.

"That's the kind way to put it."

Silence descended for a long moment. Serena could faintly hear the sound of Theo chattering to himself, and she crossed her fingers he was still playing with the Lego and not, say, climbing up a bookcase.

The silence became painful, and Serena forced herself to speak. "So, you've signed all the paperwork and you're officially back?"

Bernie nodded, but there was a hesitancy in the movement that made Serena's heart ache. "I don't have to be. If it's too difficult...if it will make your position more difficult..."

"You want to leave again?"

"I--" Bernie couldn't seem to meet Serena's gaze. Her fringe had grown even longer than ever, as though she needed it to hide behind.

Serena desperately wanted to reach out and brush it aside, so she could look into Bernie's eyes and see the truth there. It was incredibly frustrating to fall for someone who had the most expressive eyes Serena had ever seen, but who also had an annoying habit of hiding behind her hair as soon as everything got emotional. Those eyes should have made everything easier, but instead, they just made it all more confusing.

"Why are you really here?" Serena asked. "I could have looked after the boy perfectly well on my own. I took care of my own children on less sleep."

Bernie almost seemed to flinch, but then she straightened her shoulders and lifted her head. For a moment, Serena had a glimpse of the army major Bernie had once been. She fought down a treacherous flush of heat. This was not the time to contemplate an unexpected uniform kink.

"I thought we should clear the air before we have to work together again," Bernie said. "We had such a good friendship before I...before everything, and it's a friendship I value more than anything else."

"More than anything else," Serena repeated softly.

As though she hadn't heard, Bernie continued. "Obviously, if I've wrecked that forever, I can find somewhere else to work, but I hope I won't have to. We worked so well together and I've missed that. I've missed you, more than I can say."

Serena's throat was uncomfortable dry and she had to cough to clear it. "If you missed me, why did you ignore all the messages I sent?"

"Cowardice," Bernie said. "Pure, unbridled cowardice. I didn't know what to say, and it was easier not to say anything at all. I'm so very, very sorry for everything."

"You know, it's been a long time since I had a friend like you." Serena made a face. "Much too long, which is probably why I didn't recognise what was happening to me for so long. Not until it was right there in my face, and then you left."

Bernie blinked, looking confused.

"I am in love with you, you blind, oblivious, _stubborn_ woman," Serena said. "You are my best friend and I have been in love with you for far longer than I should have been before I knew about it, and I hope you still feel the same or I'm going to start feeling incredibly embarrassed in about five minutes."

Still Bernie said nothing, although she tried twice and lapsed into silence both times.

Serena sighed. "Great. I pour out my heart, and you stare at me like I've grown antlers. Wonderful."

Bernie opened her mouth again, but no words came out. Again.

And then she crossed the kitchen, cupped Serena's jaw with both hands, and kissed her.

Serena was too surprised to do anything for a moment, until instinct kicked in and shoved thought aside, and she kissed Bernie back with every bit of loneliness and frustration she'd bottled up for months. She wrapped her arms around Bernie, pulled her closer, and revelled in the taste of Bernie's lips, the contrast of softness and passionate desperation. She'd daydreamed about a moment like this, replayed the brief memories of their past kisses, and none of that had ever compared to this.

Bernie was everything she'd wanted and nothing she'd expected, and Serena lost herself in the kiss.

Her lungs were aching for air when they finally parted, and Serena was sure she looked flushed and overwrought, but there was matching pinkness in Bernie's usually pale cheeks, so who cared?

"Please tell me you're not going to run away again," Serena said, trying not to sound as afraid as she felt.

Bernie smiled and shook her head. "I don't think I have the strength to this time."

"Good." Serena reached up and brushed Bernie's hair aside. The look in Bernie's eyes made a shiver run down her spine in the most delicious way. "That's very, very good."

She leaned forward for another kiss, but their lips had barely brushed when there was a crash from the living room followed by a loud, childish, "Uh oh."

Serena groaned and dropped her forehead on Bernie's shoulder. "Damn."

"How much damage can one small boy do?" Bernie asked.

Serena raised her head and lifted one eyebrow.

"Fair point," Bernie said. "You call Raf and I'll corral him somewhere safe until we can get rid of him."

"What happens after that?"

A warm smile appeared. "Whatever you want."

Serena leaned in and kissed Bernie again, which seemed to work just as well as words when it came to expressing what she wanted.


End file.
